| SCOTT'S BAD LEFT HOOK UNOFFICIAL SCORECARD | |||||||||||||
| Round | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | Total |
| Cory Spinks | 9 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 116 |
| Verno Phillips | 10 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 112 |
| SCOTT'S BAD LEFT HOOK UNOFFICIAL SCORECARD | |||||||||||||
| Round | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | Total |
| Devon Alexander | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 120 |
| Miguel Callist | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 105 |
I said it once, I'll say it again. I never wanted to be put into this position, but...
Cory Spinks got robbed tonight, losing a split decision to 38-year old Verno Phillipson scores of 116-112, 115-113 and 113-115.
I had Spinks winning the fight, 116-112. It was a lot closer than veteran play-by-play man Bob Sheridan made it out to be, as Sheridan gave Verno only one or two rounds.
The difference appears to have been Phillips' random power shots, which landed here and there. While Spinks is no puncher, he did nothing different than he usually does. He boxed from a distance, landed punches when he could, and did his thing. It's never enjoyable, but it is what it is. By my view, he beat Verno Phillips tonight. Not a pleasant fight to watch, really. It was your run of the mill Spinks performance.
But I thought Spinks clearly won the fight. Phillips was effective only in spurts, and despite his claims that Spinks was hurt four or five times in the fight, Spinks never actually looked hurt except for one time in the ninth, and even then he quickly recovered.
He did what he always did. Tonight, despite being in his hometown, judges didn't think that was good enough. What can you do? Just hope there's no rematch.
In the main undercard bout, Devon Alexander destroyed Miguel Callist to win on unanimous decision, with scores of 120-105, 120-106, and 120-106. I scored it 120-105 for Alexander, who only knocked the dreadful Callist down one time, in the 12th round, but had dominated so thoroughly that I gave him a 10-7 round there and a 10-8 round in the seventh. Alexander looks like the real deal. He's not a big puncher, but he's aggressive and comes to fight, which makes him an odd protege for Cory Spinks.
The smaller undercard fights that the live webcast picked up were fun little filler bouts, my favorite of which was John "Action" Jackson knocking out Leroy "Rootin' Tootin'" Newton at 2:10 of the first round.
Don King said he'd like to do more webcasts in the future, and I hope he does. It's a great idea, the quality was outstanding, and overall the night went quite well despite one uncompetitive bore of a fight and one competitive bore of a fight.
Congratulations to Verno Phillips on unseating Spinks as the IBF junior middleweight champion. I don't think he won at all, but he's a good guy, and if any bad decision was going to happen, I'm fine with it being Verno over Spinks.